Chapter 1: Beginnings

By the time I had any sexual contact with Pauline Miles, I was really hanging out for both the bodily pleasure and some emotional connection, but in every other respect, I was living the teenage dream. Even though I was still at school, I was living away from home as an almost independent almost adult, earning my own money and saving for a car.

Frank, my father’s much younger brother, had temporarily abandoned his teaching career to climb the money tree as a jobbing carpenter, and had purchased the first of a number of houses he would eventually own. He offered me a room and board in exchange for my labour renovating the very run down and grimy little house, and a night or two of paid work a week serving in the Coffee Bar he owned in partnership with Emma, his fiancée and the aunt of my ex girlfriend and continuing friend, workmate, and study partner, Robyn Olds.

I was stretched, both intellectually and organisationally, by the academic and extracurricular demands of the ‘A’ stream in Auckland’s top Boys High School, where my membership of the 2nd Cricket XI and 1st Soccer XI and my reputation as someone who knew lotsa girls and was probably ‘doing it’ gave me more status than most other guys starting the Form V (grade 11) year.

But I wasn’t actually ‘doing it’ any more. Robyn and I had had a very juicy sexual relationship for the previous year, with the active blessing of Fank, Emma, and Robyn’s parents, and the tacit approval of my parents and grandparents. We had both been very clear that this wasn’t troo lurve and certainly wasn’t forever, but it was nevertheless a surprise when lightning struck at my School Ball and Robyn and Jack Gavin, the deputy Head Prefect, became an item and eventually decided to become exclusive. So I had had no sex with anyone except myself since the week after Xmas.

The study group Robyn and I had set up at the start of our Form IV year had been a success, both scholastically and socially, but we were officially in recess over the seven week Xmas break before starting Form V.

There were five of us in the group. Aapi Tala was in my Homeroom, and no matter how hard I studied, he was smarter than I was. It was very easy to see why his parents had sent him down from Samoa to stay with a cousin and his family to study in NZ. He had been successfully negotiating and developing sexual relationships at different levels with both Pauline and Alison, the classmates Robyn had invited to study with us, combining and alternating genuine study in Frank’s parlour with ‘private time’ for couples in my room. That was both convenient, and potentially dangerous.

The official position in Godzone at that time was that the age of consent was 16, and a charge of ‘Indecent Assault’ was possible for anyone feeling up, petting, or getting to first, second, or third bases with anyone under 16, and ‘Unlawful Carnal Knowledge’ for anyone ‘going all the way’. It was pretty unusual for anyone to be charged unless the girl was very young, or there was a big difference in ages, but it did happen from time to time. Even if no charges were laid, coming to the attention of the Department of Social Welfare as a young person in need of care and protection was not smart.

Frank faced different risks, at least in theory. Since he owned the premises where underage children were committing sexual offences with his knowledge and consent, and as he had negotiated an agreement with the members of the study group that we would all ‘pay’ for the use of the premises for ‘study’, by taking care of most of the washing and cleaning, he was technically committing all sorts of offences. When he also proved willing to provide condoms and spermicide, contrary to provisions of the Police Offences Act, we had promised to visit him in prison.

A few days after Robyn announced that she wanted to be exclusive with Jack Gavin, I went south to the Waikato hill country for three weeks as an extra hand on the family farm where Mum grew up.

Grandma Henley had made an almost complete recovery from the broken hip she had suffered the previous winter, and seemed to be coping well with the changes that Uncle Bruce had made while she was convalescing with my mum ‘n dad. He had taken over the farm when his father succumbed to lung cancer, and had run the farming operation with Robert, his friend and workmate since they were teenagers, while his mother had continued to run the household.

Uncle Bruce had introduced pre lamb shearing while Grandma Henley was away, but the biggest change was that he had persuaded Robert to finally abandon his accommodation in the ‘shearers quarters’, and moved him into his bed in the main house. His mother had grumbled a little about ‘what the neighbours would think’, but she accepted the situation.

I think Mum must have talked with her about my lack of a girlfriend, because she encouraged me to check out a neighbour’s daughter who was home from boarding school for the holidays. Even though the girl was quite attractive, she proved to be arch, coy, an elliptical communicator, and bloody hard work! Despite my horniness, I quickly flagged her away and threw myself into the work program on the farm.

The week after I arrived, that was ‘tailing’. All the lambs born in the spring were mustered and drafted to temporarily separate them from their mothers. Then each lamb was grabbed in turn, and held against the ‘holder’s chest with the front and back legs together on each side, and the bum and genitals presented to the ‘tailer” for earmarking, castrating, tailing, drenching, and vaccinating. It wasn’t nice.

Nowadays, earmarks are plastic tags fixed through the ear, but in the early sixties, both sexes were ‘earmarked’ with a punch used to clip the leading edge of one ear. The Henley farm used a ‘V’ clip– right ear for ewes, left for male sheep, so after three or four lambs, the ‘holder’ was bloodied on both upper arms.

Male lambs were castrated to become wethers, by fitting a very tight rubber ring round the base of the scrotum to cut off the circulation to the testicles, which would shrivel and fall off after about three weeks. Both sexes were ‘tailed’ with a sharp-edged hot iron, which not only severed the tail leaving a ‘stump’ of about four inches, but also cauterised the blood vessels involved. The final operations were a shot of vaccine against ‘pulpy kidney’, and a drench against intestinal worms. Then the ‘tailed’ lamb, still bleeding from its ear, and perhaps also a little from its tail stump, was released back into the paddock with the ewes to find its mother again

It was a noisy, bloody, messy, smelly business. The world was filled with the smell of burning wool, burning flesh, sheep shit, and sweat, and the sound of hundreds of lambs squealing as a counterpoint to the piteous bleating of their mothers. I was glad that we always had to quit by afternoon smoko to allow the lambs and ewes to ‘mother up’ before nightfall.

The second day, I volunteered to ‘put the dogs away’ while Bruce and Robert cleaned up. I shut them in their kennels, refilled their water bowls, and cut a leg off the old ewe killed for ‘dog tucker’ a few days before and hung in the flyproof meat safe. I sawed the leg into portions, fed the dogs, and went to shower in the shearer’s quarters before going back to the house.

I was slightly embarrassed to find Uncle Bruce and Robert in the shearer’s shower together. They had left the door part open and I bowled in on them before I realised they were in there together. They both sported well lathered erections.

“Sorry!” I backed out in some confusion. Bruce was apologetic.

“Shit! Sorry! Not used to company.”

I sat in the shearer’s kitchen until the two of them emerged from the bathroom in clean clothes. Robert tried to explain.

“Showers are special for us. For years, the shower in there was the only place we could safely get together.”

“No problem. Robyn calls it ‘saving water’.” I guess I was really tired, and the feeling had sorta snuck up on me, but when it arrived, the realisation hit me like a kick in the guts.

I was never going to shower with Robyn Olds again! That felt awful!

Uncle Buce and Robert must have seen the hurt in my face, because they began to move towards me even before I started to sniffle. Bruce’s arm around my shoulder was enough to release a flood of feelings I didn’t know I had, and I sobbed all over the pair of them as we stood in a slightly awkward three way cuddle. I was embarrassed, but it felt good, and after a minute or four, we went into the house for a cuppa with Grandma.

Nothing much of note happened during the rest of my stay, except that I was trusted to select, kill, dress, and hang a wether for the table, and once again returned to Auckland on the bus with a sack of mutton joints for my parents, the Grand Kerrs, and Frank ‘n me.

I came back on a Saturday to a scene of great activity. ‘Mary’s World’, Frank and Emma’s Coffee Bar, was still doing very well, though a couple of other establishments had opened and were also offering live music and poetry. The business was providing enough profit so that Frank could buy building materials for the house renovation without depending on his day job as a local contract handyman, and he was again offering paid work during the day to the members of the study group as well as the evening work at Mary’s World.

I arrived back in the early afternoon, and Grandpa Kerr met me off the bus and took charge of the meat, dropping me and my pack back home at the house in Newmarket. Frank and Aapi were relining the parlour, and Pauline, Robyn, and Alison, were painting the newly remodelled kitchen. Robyn seemed happy, and I was not inclined to share how distressed I had momentarily been at the realisation I was never again going to shower with her. My emotional condition wasn’t discussed until late in the afternoon.

The kitchen stank of paint fumes, and the parlour was a shambles of scrim, old wall paper, and stacks of Gib board, so when Frank called a break, we shifted the table and chairs into the small back bedroom, and snacked on the scones Alison had provided for smoko. The conversation was general until Pauline started to quiz Robyn about how things were going now that she was exclusive with Jack Gavin.